Tli“i4r’D _ 4.4. _ i s _. _
1 lie tsattalion
Monday, November 17, 1986
College Station, Texas
Vol. 82 No. 56 CISPS 045360 12 pages
1 i
Shultz says
iarms deal
should end
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secre
tary of State George Shultz said Sun-
HH the United States should make
jno more arms shipments to Iran,
contending “I don’t see any need for
further signals” of U.S. good faith,
^■leanwhile, John Poindexter,
iPresident Reagan’s national security
adviser, said the U.S. arms embargo
agjMnsj Jran still stands and he re-
mai..s optimistic that more hostages
may be released by pro-Iran forces,
^■ut Robert McFarlane, former
national security adviser who made
atleast one secret trip to Iran, said
■■moderate Iranian contacts are in
danger of being killed now that his
efforts have been made public.
^Senate Democratic leader Sen.
Robert Byrd, D-W.V., urged the ad-
mil) isi ration to state publicly that
there would be no more arms ship
ments to Iran “or any other terrorist
state.” A congressional investigation
into administration dealings with
Iran, which Reagan denies were di
rect negotiations for the release of
hostages, is to begin this week.
!|^B > resident Reagan, returning to
the White House from Camp David,
brushed aside a reporter’s question
aslto whether he had stopped arms
shipments to Iran, saying, “I told
you the truth once.”
^Shultz, interviewed on CBS’ “Face
the Nation,” did not specifically crit-
irizc past arms shipments but said
Reagan’s decision to send a signal to
Iran with an arms shipment was a
subject for debate.
Husked if more arms would be
sent, he said, “It’s certainly against
oui policy. ... As far as I’m con
cerned, I don’t see any need for fur
ther signals.” He said, however, he
did not speak for the entire adminis
tration.
^Explaining why earlier this fall he
said the United States was not send
ing arms to Iran, Shultz said “my
ow.i information about the operatio
nal aspects of what was going on was
fragmentary at best.”
■Rep. Jim Wright, D-Texas, House
Democratic leader said “it appears
that laws have been broken” with the
arms deal. He said U.S. laws forbid
arms shipments to terrorist coun
tries, including Iran, and require the
administration to inform Congress
of covert actions.
Curtains For f A Funny Thing’
Photo by Tom Ownbey
Bonnie O’Donnell looks for a place to put sty
rofoam statues after the Aggie Players’ final
production of “A Funny Thing Happened on
the Way to the Forum” Sunday. O’Donnell
and the rest of the cast and crew took the set
apart minutes after the performance.
Officials say
schools hurt
by economy
Poll says downturn in Texas
hurts educational advances
DALLAS (AP) — Higher educa
tion in Texas has improved, but the
state’s economic downturn is under
mining the advances, say academic
officials polled by the Dallas Morn
ing News.
Among 854 survey respondents,
44 percent said the overall reputa
tion of Texas’ higher education has
improved. About 67 percent de
scribed most of the state’s institu
tions as average.
The survey, results of which were
published Sunday, was mailed to
3,000 chief academic officers across
the nation. Respondents were guar
anteed anonymity.
About half of those who said they
believe Texas’ educational reputa
tion has improved also said they
would change their answers if fund
ing cuts approved this year were not
restored.
Texas lawmakers have sliced 10.5
percent from higher education bud
gets to reduce a budget deficit
spurred by plunging oil prices and a
corresponding decrease in state rev
enues.
Former U.S. Education Secretary
Terrell H. Bell described the state’s
higher education situation as tragic.
“Higher education in Texas has
taken the brunt of this (economic)
downturn,” said Bell, who now
heads a national commission on
higher education.
Several of the survey respondents
said the education cuts were evi
dence of state leaders’ wavering re
solve about the quality of higher ed
ucation.
“Higher education was improving
in Texas, but has declined quickly
over the past 12 to 18 months due to
the terrible budget cuts to state col
leges and universities,” said a survey
respondent from a small public insti
tution in the West. “The damage
done has not yet been assessed.”
To obtain grade averages, each
Syrian president Assad denies ties to terrorism
I DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Presi
dent Hafez Assad denied that Syxia
was involved in terrorism and ac
cused President Reagan and Brit
ain’s Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher on Sunday of being the
“real terrorists.”
p; “We are against terrorism, we
don’t practice it and do not allow
anyone to hatch terrorist plots from
our territory,” Assad told about
7,000 people at a Damascus stadium
on the 16th anniversary of the coup
that brought him to power.
BlAssad said, however, that Syria
backed “resistance against occupa
tion and all national liberation
movements.”
■From time to time the president
halted for a moment and the crowd
shouted slogans such as “We are
against terrorism! Zionists are the
beasts of the jungle! Hafez is our
leader!” and “America, the terror
ists!”
Britain cut ties with Syria last
month after a Jordanian, Nezar Hin-
dawi, was convicted of working with
Syrian diplomats in trying to plant a
bomb on an Israeli airliner in Lon
don.
The United States announced Fri
day it would impose diplomatic and
economic measures against the
Damascus government, citing Syria’s
alleged support for terrorist groups.
Assad accused Israeli intelligence
officials of planning the bombing
and said he wished to express Syria’s
“astonishment” at Western measures
against his country.
He said Reagan and Thatcher
were “the real terrorists who practice
state terrorism against the freedom
of the people.”
He cited as examples the U.S. in
vasion of Grenada, U.S support for
Nicaraguan guerrillas and “British
army practices” in Egypt and the rest
of the Arab world during the 1950s.
“When they accuse Syria of ter
rorism, they want to terrorize and
frighten Syria,” Assad said. “Syria
cannot be terrorized nor frightened
into changing its national political
course. Quite the contrary, Syria, if
it wishes so, is the one who frightens
and terrorizes.
“He who extends to us a friendly
hand, we extend a friendly hand to
him, but he who extends an evil
hand, we extend to him a knife and
we cut off his hand,” Assad said.
He said his nation would be able
to cope with the measures imposed
by Britain, the United States and the
European Common Market.
“For the sake of our freedom and
independent decision, we shall sacri
fice whatever it might take,” he said.
“We shall give up lots of things if the
nation so needs.”
The United States tightened trade
controls and banned commercial
flights between Syria and America.
The Common Market, with the ex
ception of Greece, banned the sale
of new arms to Syria, suspended
high-level official visits and agreed
to review the activities of their diplo
mats in Syria.
Assad thanked Greece for refus
ing to go along. He paid tribute to
“the people of Greece and to Pre
mier Andreas Papandreou for their
noble and principled stand.”
Assad said Syria faced economic
difficulties, but blamed them on “the
international economic crisis” and
“the huge spending on defense to
which the Israeli expansionist army
is compelling us.”
academic officer was asked to assign
grades to each category. The grades
were given numerical values, and
the numbers averaged. The aver
ages were then translated back into
grades.
The University of Texas was
named best in the state by 42 percent
of the respondents and it rated a B
plus on a national scale.
Rice University followed with
about 20 percent of the respondents
and with a grade of B. Texas A&M
University also scored a B.
The University of Houston, Texas
Tech, Southern Methodist Univer
sity, Baylor, Texas Christian Univer
sity and Trinity University in San
Antonio scored a grade of C plus.
North Texas State University
came in last among 10 colleges with
the lowest numerical grade equaling
aC.
Austin College — a small liberal
arts school in Sherman — was most
often named by administrators when
asked to identify another college
they thought worthy of mention.
Among the 44 percent of survey
respondents who think that the
state’s higher education reputation is
improving, 66 percent credited the
rise to an ability to recruit good fac
ulty.
“Something should be done or
this will lead some of the very distin
guished professors to begin thinking
of leaving — or of not coming to
Texas,” Bell said of the education
budget cuts.
Fifty-five percent of the respon
dents expressed little or no interest
in taking jobs in Texas.
A study of Texas public colleges
and universities last summer by the
Council for University Presidents
and Chancellors showed 500 faculty
members at 25 schools had resigned
or refused offers from Texas institu
tions for fall 1986.
Some respondents criticized what
one described as Texas’ “feast or
famine” approach to funding higher
education. They said that a small,
but steadier and more reliable
source of support, such as an en
dowed fund, was preferable.
About a third of the respondents
included unsolicited comments on
Texas college football.
“The athletic situation is a na
tional disgrace and actually hurts the
reputation of the school in the aca
demic process,” a respondent said
about SMU, which is currently on
NCAA probation for recruiting vio
lations.
“If I answered with respect to win
ning, I would give most Texas
schools an A,” said a respondent
from a large public institution in the
South. “With respect to honesty,
most get an F.”
Long-distance services begin crackdown
‘Epidemic’ of telephone fraud sweeps A&M
By Christi Daugherty
Staff Writer
“Hey Aggies! Your University has pro
dded you with a long distance service that is
absolutely free! Just follow these instruc
tions ...”
This promise appeared on a flier in
Crocker Hall at the beginning of this semes
ter and must have sounded too good to be
true to the dorm residents.
It was.
The codes belonged to people who would
later receive six-figure phone bills, says Sonya
Benton of University Communications Inc.
Benton says the flier is just another symp
tom of a telephone fraud epidemic that is
preading across the A&M campus.
Area long-distance services all are having
uch severe problems with the illegal use of
rilling codes that the companies are getting
ogether to crack down on the abusers, she
lays.
Benton says University Communications
1as lost over $20,000 in the past month alone.
“It’s getting out of hand,” she says. “We
rant to stress that it is a very illegal practice,
and it’s very easy to catch.”
University Communicatons has caught 125
people in the past month, the majority of
them freshmen living on campus, she says.
And those caught have revealed a variety of
different ways used to get the billing num
bers.
She says computer hackers are the most
frequent offenders. They can program their
computers to dial random combinations of
numbers until they come across valid codes.
Hackers then sell or give the codes to friends
or leave them in strategic areas.
Public restrooms and areas around public
phones are common places such code listings
are found, she says.
University Communications doesn’t
usually file charges against offenders, Benton
says, but has a policy of allowing those who
cooperate to pay the full amount of the
phone charges and avoid criminal procedure.
However, the majority of the long-distance
services do press charges against offenders,
she added.
Jack Poison, the head of MCI’s Houston of
fices, says MCI always prosecutes.
“We make it very clear that anybody we can
identify we prosecute,” Poison says. “We
don’t care who you are or what your age is, or
if it was a dollar or a thousand, we will pros
ecute to the fullest extent of the law.”
He says the problem originally started sev
eral years ago with just a few hackers gaining
illegal access, but as more companies entered
the market, more access was available. Now
the problem is a multi-million-dollar one.
Long-distance companies have developed
technology to counter the electronic thieves.
Poison says, and now there are many ways to
identify illegal use as it happens.
These include hiring extra personnel who
check the electronic bulletin boards where
hackers post the active codes, and alert those
whose codes are posted. Also, computers
have been developed to notify MCI officials
when a radical change occurs in an individu
al’s calling patterns. '
“If Mrs. Jones in Pasadena usually has a
$20 phone bill, and suddenly starts making
$900 worth of calls, the computer will alert
us,” he says. “We then contact her and ask her
if she’s making the calls. If she’s not, we find
out who is.”
Poison says tracing the illegal calls has be
come very simple. Any call can be identified.
“Every time you make a call it’s automat
ically recorded by your local phone service,”
he says. “They know you made it, and they
know who you called.
“When' we get a printout, it contains the
number where the call originated, and local
companies like GTE and Southwestern Bell
match that up with an address and a name.
“And then we’ve got you.”
Alex Walter, the assistant student legal ad
viser at A&M, says that once people are dis
covered by a phone company making illegal
calls, they can be in serious trouble.
“Basically what you’re looking at in this
case is a possible criminal charge, because this
is a criminal offense as theft of services,” Wal
ter says.
The potential amount of punishment de-
See Fraud, page 12
Source says
N. Korean
leader killed
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The
South Korean Defense Ministry, in a
broadcast Sunday on state-run ra
dio, said North Korean loudspeak
ers along the demilitarized zone
were saying North Korean President
Kim II Sung had been killed in a
shooting.
Radio Press, a Japanese news
agency in Tokyo that monitors com
munist bloc broadcasts, said North
Korea’s official Radio Pyongyang
did not say anything about Kim or a
shooting in its hourly newscast at 11
a.m. Monday (8 p.m. Sunday CST).
Lee Heung-shik, spokesman for
the South Korean Defense Ministry,
said, “North Korean propaganda
loudspeakers at the front line said
on Sunday Kim II Sung had been
shot and killed.”
He added that regular North Ko
rean radio broadcasts monitored
here had made no mention of such a
happening, and that no confirma
tion had been received through
other channels.
Kim, 74, came to power with So
viet backing in North Korea after
the pensinsula was divided at the
end of World War II.